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On Sat­ur­day Jan­u­ary 19th, I helped a bud­dy get his (unique) motor­cy­cle down to Down­town HD in Ren­ton for a Vin­tage Bike show. Focus was on dirt bikes, and motor­crossers, but all sorts of inter­est­ing things came out of the wood­work. Here are a few of the pic­tures I took. Grab a tasty bev­er­age for a nice stroll down memory’s pit lane here.

ready to head for the show

brag stick­er on a Pen­ton-Was­sel tri­als bike

Ducati swingarm detail

Ducati Scram­bler

Bul­ta­co Pur­sang, in the frozen fog

an Aer­ma­c­chi-harley 350 Road Rac­er

exhaust detail on a Tri­umph 500cc Moto-cross­er

a Hoda­ka Super Rat — my first bike

CJ-Framed Hon­da 4-stro­ker

a Pen­ton 125 Six-Days

a 1955 Maico tai­fun 400. just wow.

Hoda­ka Super Wom­bat

with wom­bat

any­one who would like larg­er ver­sions of these, or any­thing else that was there that I might have on film (so to speak), please just let me know. rub­ber side down!

Last year, I caught the Sport-Tour­ing bike bug again. I have owned sev­er­al over the years, and a quick ride on a friend’s ’09 BMWR1200RT real­ly remind­ed me what I was miss­ing on my long-legged ‘Tur­bo Giraffe’ (KTM 950 Adven­ture). So I began list­ing bikes I might want and research­ing them. One by one they got crossed off the list, the Tri­umph Tro­phy SE being the last non-BMW to be crossed off; nice bike, but a bit bor­ing in the motor depart­ment.

So it was, I found myself on 8 march 2014 at South Sound BMW look­ing at a left-over 2013 K1600GT. I’ve always want­ed to own an inline six-cylin­der motor­cy­cle and a 12-cylin­der car. I’m now 1 for 2 in that area. 🙂

A quick test ride and a hand­shake deal was agreed to. The next day saw me take deliv­ery of said beast and then ride it 65 miles home in a mon­soon of a down­pour. Yes­ter­day, I final­ly got a chance to wash her off and take a few pics, so here we are.

front view. don’t look now but some­thing is gain­ing on you!

Left side. all clean and shiny. 685 miles at this point

2013 K1600GT Mon­tego Blue

The view from the bridge. When the loud han­dle is twist­ed, you’d bet­ter be hang­ing on!

right side, rear. the pipes are sor­ta sil­ly look­ing, but they don’t sound bad, and a set of Akra’s cost big bucks.

right side, show­ing off the mighty inline-6, and it’s for­ward cant. Is this the new Slant-6?

In the last cou­ple of months we’ve seen more preda­tors and few­er deer than in the past.

We do have a nice lit­tle buck­ling hang­ing around.

our buck­ling

And here he is with one of the does.

buck­ling and doe in the evening

We also had a cou­ple of very excit­ing days when we were being vis­it­ed by a bear. We saw him wan­der across the work yard one evening around sup­per time. Here’s a pic­ture of him cruis­ing down the dri­ve­way. And we found him again a cou­ple of nights lat­er chow­ing down on the bird feed­ers. The first time in over 15 years that we’ve had prob­lems with the bird feed­ers. It’s sad that I can’t watch the sum­mer bird from my office win­dows.

bear on the dri­ve­way!

We’ve seen a lot of the coy­otes. Fre­quent­ly as a pair. There has been no sign of pups, per­haps they are too young? This is the first year that we’ve seen them togeth­er.

wan­der­ing around the low­er pas­ture road

Once more walk­ing up the dri­ve­way in the mid­dle of the night.

walk­ing up the dri­ve­way in the mid­dle of the night

The big news how­ev­er is that we have cap­tured on cam­era the col­lared female cougar that haunts our neigh­bor­hood.

Sad­ly it seems that she was in the neigh­bor­hood attack­ing live­stock. None of ours but folks just up the road lost an alpaca.

tracked under the name F17

Some­times you get just plain odd or lucky shots. The dri­ve­way cam­era is some­times trig­gered by birds land­ing on the rail that you can see on the left in these pic­tures. Here’s lucky shot of a bird fly­ing away.

one of the crows?

We also cap­ture the occa­sion­al strolling neigh­bor.

man and dog

Sum­mer is almost over — we’ll prob­a­bly only mow one more time. But in the mid­dle of sum­mer it’s a con­stant bat­tle against the over­whelm­ing veg­e­ta­tion. Here Jim is mow­ing the low­er pas­ture lane

And this one last shot of our­selves com­ing back from a con­cert in the side­car.

I seems like it snowed a lot in Decem­ber though part of that is that it has also snowed at the begin­ning of the year.

Ear­ly in the Decem­ber we had a decent amount of snow

snow — makes the farm pret­ty and the walk­ing treach­er­ous.

New sight­ing. I’m pret­ty sure that the bird tak­ing off (land­ing?) on the post that the cam­era is on is our local barred owl. We hear him at night and occa­sion­al­ly are dive bombed when walk­ing in the woods dur­ing the day.

the barred owl?

No sign of the large preda­tors this month. Just a cou­ple of vis­its by a solo coy­ote.

look­ing fat and sassy?

There were very few appear­ances by the does. But Bucky was around a lot He’s fine look­ing fel­low.

bucky makes a day time vis­it.

in the sep­tic field at night

Bucky is shar­ing the sep­tic field with the bun­nies. These lit­tle ones only show up on the cam­eras if some­thing else trig­gers them.

bun­ny!

I did fig­ure out what has been trig­ger­ing the sep­tic cam­era when there are no obvi­ous ani­mals. Now that we’ve used up the wood in the first rack the cam­era can see into the work yard and it trig­gers when ever some­one is out mov­ing around the wood racks or the back of the shop. Look care­ful­ly and you can see Jim fill­ing the cart to bring fire­wood to the house.

where’s Wal­do?

There was a Christ­mas Day walk with my mom and a tiny bit of snow.

the fam­i­ly goes for a walk on Christ­mas Day.

2017 year start­ed with more snow. And the cam­era on the pas­ture road was very arty.

The deer are walk­ing around in groups again. Three most­ly. I haven’t seen any sign of the buck or his antlers since Decem­ber. I was hop­ing to get the antlers for the dog to chew on.

The preda­tors have been out at night. Coy­otes both on the low­er pas­ture road and in the sep­tic field.

And Bob the Cat.

and then there’s the weath­er — what a March. Rain, Fog, Wind! Giz­mo and I walked reli­gious­ly but some days nei­ther of us was too pleased about it.

We’re going to move two of the cam­eras lat­er this week. I think we’ve seen all there is to see in the sep­tic field and on the low­er pas­ture road. (The dri­ve­way cam­era will stay — that’s a secu­ri­ty thing that occa­sion­al­ly catch­es some­thing more inter­est­ing than the UPS lady com­ing and going.)

Soon it will be time to start on the farm projects for spring/summer. Look for news!